An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the ''Essex'' (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (Herman Melville's 1851 novel ''Moby-Dick'' was in part inspired by this story).,

Velvet Revolution: The number of protesters assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.,